Calling on Linux

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The results of Lifehacker‘s Hive Five for Best Linux Distributions came out this week. Taking the lead are Debian-based distributions Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint. Mint is a version of Ubuntu which is a version of Debian. Behind them was Fedora, our distribution of choice, then Gentoo. Fedora, is, of course, the distribution used by Linus Torvalds, the Father of Linux. We’ve stated and continue to state our thought about Linux on many occasions.

Coming in, interestingly enough, on the heels of the announcement was the release of Presto Beta. Presto is a $20 paid(or will be when it moves out of beta on April 13th) distribution of Linux based on Xandros, and is billed as a fast-loading Linux desktop you install from Windows. It was built for boot-up speed, and intends to give laptop users an alternative system to jump into when they really just want to do something quick without having to wait for a full OS to boot up. Manufacturers have been offering an alternate instant-on Linux-based system called Splashtop, which they have embedded into chips on many motherboards.

We are looking forward to the next version of Fedora, where they are trying to achieve a goal of a 20-second to login-screen startup. They may not reach it, but we’re sure they’ll get the time down as much as they can. We also, despite our interest in out-of-the-box bundles, can suggest a variety of tweaks for many Linux distributions to scale them down.

For example, Fedora and Ubuntu defaultly use Gnome as its desktop manager. Gnome can be replaced, for example, with XFCE or LXDE, both more lightweight. LXDE is recommended for netbooks for that reason. Openbox is a lightweight Window manager that will work under Gnome and offers many memory improvements and simplifications over alternatives. XFCE is another lightweight desktop manager, offered as the primary desktop on a special custom spin of Fedora.

With a few simple tweaks, one can get good results out of any Linux distribution on one’s hard drive. And the distributions, not just Fedora, are working on the issue as well, looking for places the default configuration can be altered to remove unnecessary or redundant commands that slow it, or for places to optimize.

For those of you with netbooks, check out this review of several custom spins of various Linux distributions optimized for netbooks. We have yet to see a community supported distribution of Fedora for netbooks, but we are sure someone will jump on that. Until then, we also wonder if there is a way to configure the boot loader to offer booting up into a stripped down desktop/window manager and configuration or a full Gnome launch, allowing you to switch between the two on the same OS from startup. If there isn’t, might be worth setting up.

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